I spent the last six months on a sabbatical — focusing entirely, and gloriously, on me — and exercising “sacred selfishness” for half-a-year felt good (maybe a little too good), until I received this email (along with other stark reminders that we are in a $torm right now and good people need help navigating):
“Thanks for getting back to me. I am 56 years old. I own 4 dry cleaners that I’m in the process of trying to sell and I already have money to invest… Everyone says get a financial advisor and I don’t trust them.
I'm ready to start when you are ready.”
There was something about the frankness of this message — its vulnerability, its honesty, its determination, its optimism — that made me want and need to return to client work.
It soured my sabbatical in the healthiest way possible.
This message (along with others like it) makes me realize that life is at its best when it involves helping other people conquer their most painful and expensive blind spots using the skillsets that I’ve spit-shined.
I kept going with my sabbatical, after receiving these emails, but became acutely aware that over-indulging “time away” beyond what was absolutely necessary was absolutely lazy, absolutely selfish, and borderline disdainful to the people that I built my fishy brain-baby to serve.
So I unblocked my calendar, sent personal emails to everyone who reached out to me personally to ask for help during my sabbatical, and—ironically—the first person to jump into the workshop is, in fact, a financial advisor.
Here’s what they were saying and focusing on two weeks ago:
“I’m 58. I have a very large book of business that generates a very nice income. But I don’t own the book of business. So I need to replicate or create my own pension if I ever want to stop working, if I want to have my own life and pay my own bills. I want and need to have another way to create an income without a client base. Ten years is considered long-term, but if I could do it in ten years that would be fantastic.
Why is this so essential? I’ll give you the answer. You work for yourself, right? I don’t. So tomorrow I could be asked to leave…
That’s what keeps me up at night. The people at the top can do anything at anytime to anybody. I’ve had colleagues that have been here longer that were presented a very crappy package to leave. The longer I’m here, the greater the fear grows. And the sooner I have a path to something else, the easier and better it’ll make me feel. Because the clock’s ticking.”
What were they doing, methodically and consistently, to solve these problems solo?
“Right now, I’m not doing anything.”
Here’s what they are doing and focusing on now (two weeks into their experience):
They are crystallizing exactly what they want to achieve by investing their own money at a higher level. (They’ve set an ambitious-but-doable long-term target that will land them the ability to live like an entrepreneur, and even more importantly to escape bosses that will axe them the moment it’s convenient.)
They are finding fact-based faith in their ability to invest their significant income & exploit their otherwise-powerful financial situation. (A core objective & prime opportunity for them is finding an investing sweet spot between day trading, which for them feels too amped-up, and passively diversifying, which for them feels too watered-down.)
They are passing these skills to their kids, already, by getting them involved during the playful learning process. (Specifically, they are tasking their kids to “do the dirty work” in researching video game companies… which, for the record, is an A+, well-worn way to “bait” your kids to learn Fat Fishing.)
Do you want to join them? Are you committed, not just interested? Do you have urgency, solvency, and gender-ambiguous balls? Do you have the audacity to believe that you can slaughter every dragon you take seriously, and the humility to admit that you’ve got problems that are hurting you, thwarting you, and threatening you, that you need support to solve?
We reside in a ridiculous sea of uncertainty but if you can show up with those qualities then I can promise you one thing: a focused version of you, with Find Fat Fish’s help, can solve your worst problems in 8 weeks.
Click here when you are ready.
-Cole